Two new mortality measures published

17th October 2011The Department of Health is to release the new summary hospital-level mortality indicators in two different ways.

According to E-Health Insider, the consequence of this will be different hospital mortality league tables.The DH is set to release the summary indicators later in October and these will be released at the same time as two different calculations on the Information Centre website.The summary hospital-led mortality indicators will include deaths that happen within 30 days of a patient's release from hospital, by linking hospital mortality information with data from the Office of National Statistics.The DH says that this information will be "adjusted" to allow for incidents that are not within the control of the hospital.However many trusts and doctors have voiced concerns about how the new indicators will affect their scores.The indicators will include all health service trusts in England apart from specialist hospitals.Hospital which do not fall within expected limits - "outliers" - will be asked to examine the reasons behind their scores.Tim Straughan, chief executive of The NHS IC, said: "It is an indicator. If you are an outlier you need to be asking questions about why and what it might indicate."However the NHS IC and the group in charge of the development of the indicators have decided to release two measures which employ different methods.Straughan told E-Health Insider: "Where does the end of the distribution lie? On one level you may show a very crude level of adjustment with lots of outliers while on another you cut off so that there are very few outliers. We have a technical group looking at this and have opted to publish it both ways. We may end up with one."